Category Archives: Philippine American relationship

Migration according to the United Nations is a human right. But How can you console a country that is reeling from brain drain, from a luck of job opportunities and a luck of a better salary. I am obviously talking about our own country the Philippines. Where in ten million people are abroad. That’s eleven percent of the total population of the country.

In this article, I will be focusing on Filipinos in America, because they are the largest concentration of Filipinos in the world. Also because of our tight history.

There are 4 million Filipinos in the United States, why are they moving. For reasons like they wanted a better life that they don’t have in the Philippines. I don’t blame the nurses, doctors and engineers who wanted to make a better lives for being there. The salary of a nurse in America is $68,000 Annually compared to the salary of a nurse in the Philippines $8570. The Philippine economy isn’t ready to pay the price that cost.

The impact of migration economically is good, the Philippines had received billions of dollars of remittances each year. That’s why when in 2008 the Great Recession hit we weren’t hit that hard. But there are some draw backs, the biggest draw back is the brain drain that is occurring until today people who study in the brightest universities in the country is always itching to get out of the country and go abroad to where the money is.

The biggest impact of migration is seen in the family. The Filipinos are like the Italians of Asia, we have close extended family since one in every ten Filipinos are abroad, the Filipino family is essentially broken. The children of OFW’s are reeling from luck of parental guidance. Most children lose affection for their parents, Even if sometimes people consider them as well to do, they are virtual orphans.

One of the biggest secrets of the Filipino migrant community all across the world is the hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrant workers, the TNTs short for Tago ng Tago in English hiding and hiding. In America there are an estimated 300 thousand undocumented Filipinos, they often work under the table jobs and like their documented counter parts, the undocumented people wants a better life for their families here in the Philippines.

In the country of 100 million, where in people suffers, the government had a responsibility to get people jobs here in the country. In the economy that they say is booming, where are the jobs. The minimum wage is not just a living wage is almost a slave wage. You are paying them too little. It’s because of corruption that plague the country for decades, it’s also the wrong course, people are not getting jobs because of the wrong degrees.

While I want to thank people for the country’s economy. I almost feel bad, bad because they need to go in great lengths to feel economically stable to come back. I feel so bad that many of my countrymen need to go to heights just to have the money to buy homes, to pay for the children’s fees at school. I can’t believe That this is happening in a supposedly booming economy.